Magazine

Pregnant mother wearing a comfortable flowing dress at a baby shower

The Truth About Maternity Dresses for Baby Showers

Let me tell y'all the biggest lie the internet ever sold us: that you're going to float into your celebration at thirty-two weeks pregnant looking like a perfectly contoured, dew-kissed fertility goddess in a restrictive satin gown. I'm starting right...

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A sleep-deprived dad holding a glowing thermometer and looking confused at his smartphone screen in the dark.

3 AM Teething Panics And The Nikki Baby Google Search Spiral

At 3:17 AM on a Tuesday, I'm standing in the middle of the nursery holding a glowing infrared forehead thermometer like a phaser set to stun. My 11-month-old is thrashing around in his crib like a fish on a dock,...

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Exhausted mother comforting a baby in a dimly lit nursery

The Morbid Truth About Rock a Bye Baby and Why It Still Works

Don't open up a search engine at three in the morning to research the origins of nursery rhymes while bouncing a screaming infant. It's a terrible idea that only leads to weird historical rabbit holes and more anxiety. I know...

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A toddler sitting on a playmat while an older girl reads a graphic novel on a green sofa

Why The Modern Baby-Sitters Club Reboot Is Actually Good

Sitting on my sofa last weekend, I made a critical error in judgment. I queued up the baby-sitters club 1995 movie for my ten-year-old niece, Maya, expecting a beautiful bonding moment over vintage denim and childhood innocence. Don't do this....

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A tired father wearing his baby in a carrier while working on a laptop at a kitchen island.

Debugging Fatherhood: What Silverbacks Taught Me About Babies

I was standing in our Portland kitchen at 3 AM, wearing a stained t-shirt and intensely color-coding my son's diaper output in a spreadsheet, when I realized my troubleshooting manual for fatherhood was completely corrupted. The lactation consultant at the...

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A basket of newborn clothes sitting next to an unmarked bottle of laundry detergent

Dear Jess: The Unfiltered Truth About Buying Baby Detergent

Dear Jess from six months ago, I see you standing there in aisle 14 of the H-E-B in Corsicana, completely frozen. You've got your two-year-old hanging off the front of the shopping cart trying to eat a bruised banana, your...

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Mom holding a baby in a simple brown organic cotton bodysuit with felt ears

Why I Stopped Buying $45 Polyester Baby Pumpkins (And What I Do Now)

There I was, sitting on the porch steps in the humid Texas heat, trying to pry a screaming six-month-old out of a rigid polyester pumpkin suit that somehow didn't have a single snap at the crotch. My oldest daughterβ€”who's now...

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A dad holding a messy baby while frantically checking his phone.

System Failure: Searching for Baby Clothes Near Me in Portland

The sound was suspiciously similar to a ketchup bottle emptying its final contents, but we were miles from a diner and my eleven-month-old daughter was entirely too pleased with herself. We were at Mt. Tabor park, I was trying to...

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A dad looking confused at a pregnancy tracking app on his phone

The truth about baby bump timelines and why apps lie to you

I was standing in our kitchen holding a retractable Stanley tape measure against my wife's stomach, trying to log exactly how many centimeters her abdomen had grown since the previous Tuesday. She looked down at me like I was trying...

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